Make it easy to get Healthy!

I honestly try to live healthy every single day.  I am great some days, good some days, so-so some days, and not so good some days!  I don’t every have a crazy eat crap day actually, as the guilt would consume me! I just have a weird thing where I would feel absolutely awful if I just let myself eat candy, fried foods, soda or whatever all day long.  I guess that is the one good thing about my personality, or shall we say good about my disease.  I am bulimic but thank goodness I traded that bad habit for another good habit, running, years ago!  I can write a series of blogs on my life and growing up and what I have gone through, but this is a happy blog!!!  I am in a much better place and have been for years, so I want to share ideas with others and hope to help at least some people get on a good health kick and actually enjoy eating and being healthy!!

I really try and focus on Sundays as a meal planning day.  I go through some saved recipes, vegan cookbooks, and then look what I have left in the cupboard, freezer and refrigerator and then star jotting some things down. I have a nutritionist and have taken classes to kind of have a good idea of good and bad foods.  I also very HIGHLY recommend reading Fiber Fueled as it is a very enlightening book on eating plant based!  Here it is:

I have a little booklet that have my days on one side and I kind of just jot down some meals I want to try, some things I can make for lunch or dinner and have leftovers, some healthy snacks to grab during the week, and something easy to eat for breakfast (love to do overnight oats)!  Once you jot down some things you would like (and keep in mind you will probably not cook every night), then take a peek in your cupboards and refrigerator and see what you have, then add to your list of what you don’t have.  NOTE: One good thing as you are perusing recipes is I tend to look at stuff I already have available, so less groceries, less money to spend!  Here is a nice little planner to start you off:

Now, let’s get into some of this food!  I have been kind of obsessed with the Plantyou book as of late! Here are a couple reasons why: I keep myself too busy, taking classes, working full-time, running which seems full-time, trying to create a blog, and try and spend some time with my hubby in there somewhere, so this book makes cooking easy! 🙂  It also has pictures of all the ingredients and so far, I have found nothing very time consuming or hard to make.  Here is the book, and if you want to attempt some vegan recipes, this is the cookbook I so highly recommend!!

Okay I know this is getting long and you hate to scroll just to get to a recipe, but this is more about the meal planning than the recipes!  I made a quick little video of kind of what I am planning and how I go about it, also a tidbit about my snacks for the week!

So finally, I ended up with not a lot of groceries – $72 to be exact which was a lot of produce because since being on a plant-based diet I have a lot of ingredients already in the cupboard which is why I noted to make sure and look through your cupboards, refrigerator and freezer before you go shopping, and also as you meal plan so you can plan around what you have that needs to be used!

My groceries consisted of:

1. Bananas
2. Mandarin Oranges
3. Radishes
4. Broccoli sprouts
5. Cauliflower
6. Cabbage
7. Mushrooms
8. Jackfruit (2 cans)
9. Frozen edamame
10. Arugula
11. Rolled Oats (I usually have a large bag of these on hand but was out)
12. Rice Paper (sometimes hard to find – usually an Asian grocery store will have them)
13. Vegetable broth (something to always keep on hand)
14. Sweet Potatoes
15. Avocados
16. Apple Juice (bought an individual serving bottle as will not use for much else)
17. Tempeh
18. Bread
19. Peanut Butter (Natural crunchy)
20. Taco Shells
21. Ranch Powder
22. Coconut Yogurt
23. Cucumbers

I think that about covers it, and I probably picked up a couple other things I did not need, but things I would still use like frozen vegan Chicken sandwiches for something quick, some dark chocolate in case I decide on a snack!

Now for the meals!  I just made some nutrient bomb breakfast cookies which look amazing but just pulled out of the oven so will have to post later how they taste, but this is what they ended up looking like – made 8 cookies – with Rolled oats, Oat Flour (you can use flour of your choice), Pumpkin seeds (pepitas), dried cranberries, flaxseed, chia seed, cinnamon, baking powder, bananas, maple syrup and almond milk!

Here is what I have made so far:

• Breakfast cookies above
• Asian Salad w/Peanut Sauce – My favorite and made my own dressing for it!   This is it for my lunch with a Tempeh BLT!  The Tempeh Bacon on this is so incredibly easy to make and tastes wonderful – I use on salads and BLT!  Here is the recipe: https://achievethedistance.com/tempehbacon/

• Smashed Chickpea Salad (my favorite for the week)

• Citrus Solstice Salad – check out the dressing I used, and it last me for a few days to make lunch salads: Go To Balsamic Dressing
• Jackfruit Pulled Sandwich (Vegan replacement for pulled pork and I swear you would not know the difference)

– All these recipes above are actually in the Plant You book!

I still have more to make this week and will share some pictures on my instagram, so be sure to follow!